Charles Dickens opened up A Tale of Two Cities with his famous line, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times …”

We’re fortunate. Our times aren’t anything like the times Dickens described. However, it does highlight that it is possible to look at a given moment in time through two different lenses.

We keep hearing how bad things are right now. For some, they are. We can’t fully control what happens to us; we are completely in charge of how we respond.

We can choose to only see the bad or we can strive to find the good. For it’s often in the worst times that we learn the most. For that, we can be grateful.

Victor Frankl, author of the wonderful book Man’s Search for Meaning, endured the concentration camps of World War II. He came to realize that the guards could take away almost everything from him, but they could never take away his thoughts. That led to his discovery of a whole new field of social psychology.

By focusing his thoughts on things that were positive, he could escape the horrors he saw around him. By remembering things that inspired him in the past, he could be lifted up in spite of his miserable conditions.

It didn’t make his conditions any better. It did give him the spirit to press on rather than give up. And because of it, he made a discovery that has changed the lives of countless people.